Well, I am back. And it is about time. For me, I mean. Creature of habit, as always, just got out of the habit of writing in the middle of all the exams and didn't really get back in. But anyway, hop back on, or something like that.
November was a bit of an experiment. The initial idea was to write every day of the month, just to see if I could. And at first it went great--turns out length for me is more an issue of will, up until a certain point, and as always a bit of discipline does wonders. Who knew? But then it got weird and emo, and after the second or third time missing I decided, well I can't go every day now, and let myself not keep up. Here I'm reading way too much into this, but that makes sense considering everything to do with grace as of late, but I am learning, and it is good, and with any luck, that'll come in future posts. I kind of feel weird about following a month of a ton of productivity with a month of a lack of it, but all reading into things aside, how about I just write this post?
The only thing that really comes immediately to mind is that I switched my facebook (which I will be giving up around New Years for a yet to be determined period of time) into Romanian sometime during exams, and I'll tell you what, that has been an adventure. Facebook's buggy, as always, and at first it was this really strange hybrid between Spanish (it's been in Spanish for about a year now) and English and Romanian. Now the Spanish has mostly gone away, but it still alternates between the English and the Romanian--one day one part will be one language, and the next it'll be the other. And then the Romanian keeps changing. For example, the like button--one day it'll say imi place (I like) and the next it'll say iti place (you like) which does make sense, depending on from whose perspective you're saying it (either I'm saying I like it, therefore clicking the button, or they're asking me if I like it, and then I click the button).
I love to do this sort of thing though, with anything at all I do things repetitively on. My old roommate or someone switched my phone into Portuguese and, because at first I couldn't figure out how and later I was too lazy, for three months I would substitute the Portuguese (kind of like the 'I me gusta'ed his status' thing from before) within regular English rules, all American sounding and everything. That said, the temptation to not do away with facebook for a while lies in the exposure to Romanian, and for that reason I still may not do it--I could flip through the New Testament I have, but it's really just not as effective, even if I'm doing it parallel to the English, which--
Cool word thing. So the other night I was hanging out on biblegateway and I looked up Isaiah 43 in Romanian and I know it fairly well in English--not well enough to quote it or anything, but to guess along, follow along, figure it out with some of the Romanian (with my Bible open beside me to for real follow along, of course), and anyway. I came across the word martorii, and I thought, huh, that looks a little like martyr. And I never knew this until I read the beginning of this book by Richard Wurmbrand (who, ironically, was a Romanian Jew), but martyrs, witnesses--well, I'll do a bad job of explaining it but they're pretty synonymous. And so when I saw martorii, between context and what I'm assuming is a common Latin root, I thought it could be witnesses, and sure enough it was. And that's pretty much the coolest word thing I've come across lately.
There's some other stuff too, but I can't think of any of it right now. Looking forward to getting back into the habit of this. Until then--
No comments:
Post a Comment